CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Two days later, Sir Gervase Elwes was arraigned for 'the malicious aiding, comforting and abetting Weston in the poisoning and murder of Overbury', further proving the Law's travesty of justice. I knew nothing of that at the time, or of his execution on Tower Hill. Not even Barbara could reach me and the walnut stain had faded from my face and the black dye from my white hair before my nightmares ended and I opened my eyes to see Thomas Campion's anxious face bending over me. I thought I was still dreaming as he felt my pulse and held cordial to my lips.
"Thank Mistress Sims here for your life," he said. "You have been out of your mind and she has had to wrestle with you to put food and drink between your lips and keep you from self harm. Fortunately, I called with messages of condolence from Sir Thomas Monson, now confined to the Tower and himself a sick man. I am ashamed that it took his urgings to bring me here."
"Doctor Campion has come these many days to care for you," interrupted Mall. "What I should have done without his calming draughts which gave you more peaceful sleep I do not know. I am a strong woman but, before he took over your care, I was finding it ever harder to hold you as you thrashed around."
"What of Suzanne?" I tried to sit up but fell back on the pillow.
"Master Peacham came to see you," replied Mall, "but you did not know him. Madam and the children are well but asking for Mistress Turner, and Master Peacham does not know how much longer he can keep the truth from them."
~
In the end, with the help of Barbara and other kind friends, the children were able to stay in Sussex and found homes and employment there. Suzanne never returned to Fetter Lane. I went to Arundel, where I told her as kindly as possible of her daughter's death. It distressed her greatly that Annie was buried in an unmarked grave but what wounded her more was that Robert Sidney had, with others, connived at the death of their child. The spark of love that had remained for him all those years was finally snuffed out and her will to live vanished. She remained a shadowy presence until the youngest grandchild no longer needed her care and then my patient companion slipped from this world. Barbara's messages consoled me for the loss of my dear friend, and Mall, in her rough way, was comforting.
I did not write to tell you this sad news for I had given up hope that you would ever read my letters, which I still addressed to Heidelberg. Perhaps you were on your travels and they failed to reach you. Will you ever peruse my story?
~
Now my little bird was flown, Prince Henry's caged bird, Raleigh, was released from the Tower and his place taken by the great ones for whom death was not the penalty. Lady Frances wept and prayed not to be put in the room where Overbury died, so the one vacated by Sir Walter was readied for her.
"I hope they manage to control the damp," he said, when he did me the honour of coming to Fetter Lane on his round of visits to friends from the old days. "Otherwise, when she is freed, she will find her dancing days over and herself limping, like me, with diseased joints. Northumberland feels the benefit of her company, as it is long since he had a pretty woman with whom to exchange compliments. She is doing him a mischief behind his back, however, and encouraging his daughter's amour with that Scot they call Doncaster. Somerset is not on speaking terms with her over this ploy. But I must drop the habit of idle prison gossip and apologise for speaking names that surely distress you. My tongue is forever running away with me."
I questioned him as to his forthcoming voyage to discover gold in Eldorado and he was full of that. He had seen Francis Bacon, cock-a-hoop on his promotion to Lord Keeper, and asked whether he should obtain a pardon before sailing, as he had not been absolved from the treason charge which had kept him in the Tower all these years. Tricky Frankie told him that there was no need and it was on that same charge that Sir Walter was convicted when he returned empty handed from the fateful voyage of the 'Destiny'.
I wished to warn him but he still knew nothing of Bacon's part in his first visit to the Tower with his wife, Elizabeth, which I had only surmised, and who was I to bring up what was over and done with? He was like a boy in prospect of his new adventure. I felt uneasy in his presence - the one great man from the past who stood against Spain and the Hapsburgs. I was consumed by guilt that, in my rancour against Cecil, I had taught you the Orphic hymn in a spirit of hate, which now, for all I knew, you might be peddling to Protestant princes who trusted you as my son. It was time I took a hand.
~
I had not used the Monas symbol since the death of Doctor Dee in 1608. Now, ten years later, I drew it large and gazed on it with fixed concentration at the day and hour the Magus had decreed, hoping that one of the German princes would reply so that I could warn him in some way without endangering you, my son. Many weeks passed without success until, just as I was about to give up all hope, I heard in my mind the once familiar voice of Landgrave Maurice of Hessen.
"It cannot be you, John Dowland, after all these years!" (No word of reproach that I had deserted their cause.) "How did you bring this about?"
When I explained, he told me that, by pure chance he had been leafing through a book, newly published at Cassel, called 'The Chemical Wedding' and had come across a Monas sign drawn in the margin.
"But it is more like a dancing devil than the true sign. Do you remember telling me that, when you first saw Doctor Dee's symbol, it reminded you of the horned devils in your Orpheus picture? Well, that is what it became for my fellow princes and, after Doctor Dee's death, they refused to use it, replacing the sun and the moon signs above the cross by a rose, such as Luther used for his badge, which is also the sign of the Virgin and of Alchemy, thus uniting all parties. After the marriage of your Princess Elizabeth to Frederick of the Palatinate, it became the double rose of York and Lancaster, which you call the Tudor rose - the symbol of the Chemical Wedding and the coming of the Golden Age. It was fate that my eyes rested on Doctor Dee's disfigured sign and my thoughts turned to the old days, just as you were trying to reach me. I have never forgotten you, John. I thought I saw your ghost once at Heidelberg....."
"That must have been my son," I interrupted. "The last I heard of him, he was there. Inigo Jones accompanied the Earl and Countess of Arundel to Heidelberg and heard Robert play at the new Elizabethan Bau."
I told the Landgrave your full story and he promised to search out news of you. Over the months, it emerged that you were indeed singing the false Orphic hymn to Elizabeth and Frederick. I remembered my Scottish vision of her loss of a crown and prayed that seeing would prove to be as counterfeit as your song. Yet my gift, if such it was, had not been false in the past.
In the summer of 1617, James decided to visit Scotland and I had a reprieve from court playing, saying my health made me unfit to travel. I could now enjoy my own kind of music, though my efforts at composition and transcription still met with no success. There was sad news from the Landgrave whose son, Otto, had recently died.
"One of your versifiers wrote of the five young princes of the religion," he told me. "Now there are only three - Frederick Ulric, the Duke of Brunswick, the Margrave of Brandenburg and his brother-in-law, Frederick of the Palatinate, on whom all our hopes are pinned. Alas, for the sad loss of Prince Henry, and now my Otto's life also is cruelly nipped in the bud."
I could not bring myself to tell my old friend that my daughter was hanged to pay for Prince Henry's death and that, even now, my son was playing a false Orphic hymn to the doom of Frederick and Elizabeth. Guilt for these mischiefs brought me physical pain and I racked my brains, seeking some way to make amends before Europe's uneasy peace toppled over the brink into religious war.
Misery increased when Sir Walter Raleigh, that fearless adventurer, chose to return to his certain death. I did not witness his gallant end, such was my terror of executions, but I went afterwards to pay my respects to Lady Raleigh, comforted by her second son, Carew. The elder, Wat, had died in a mad prank which caused the failure of his father's expedition and the sacrifice of his life to Spain. What atonement might I make to thwart the country and the religion that had destroyed Sir Walter?
I thought an opportunity presented itself when there was talk of a great Embassy to Europe, headed by Viscount Doncaster. John Donne was to accompany him as chaplain, having been ordained at James's behest some years earlier. One night, when my duties were done, I approached John and begged him to intercede for me so that I might join the party and play for the German princes. Doncaster was willing, but James hummed and hawed.
The death of Queen Anne delayed the Embassy and, as the money for her funeral took ten weeks to scrape together, the party did not leave until May, when James became very ill and it looked as though there would be another funeral at which to play. That was my hope gone of seeing you and of putting right some of the harm done. It would have been better if the king had died then. The war that soon followed would have been over quickly had it not been for his shilly-shallying.
I was at least able to entrust John Donne with a letter for you. I was told you received it at Heidelberg amid the hustle and bustle of preparations for Elizabeth and Frederick to leave for Bohemia, where they were to be crowned King and Queen. Your reply came by word of mouth and nothing was said of my injunction never more to play the Orphic hymn. You would not return to England until you heard that your great enemy was dead, which moved me to wish Robert Sidney ill. Yet, I would avoid that temptation, for it had shaken me to realise that some had supposed my illwishing to have brought Edmund Spenser to his grave. Perhaps Cecil's decline had been due less to the false Orphic hymn than to my own evil thoughts.
I confessed all my wickedness to Barbara, quite prepared for her to cast me off. She forgave and comforted me, leaving me more determined than ever to make amends.
~
James was mightily angry that Frederick had accepted the throne of Bohemia without first consulting him, and, when, in May, 1620, the German Protestant leaders wrote to him, asking for support against the Emperor, to their dismay and horror (for they depended upon him) he utterly refused. He was becoming old and silly before his time but still held onto his self-appointed role as the great Peacemaker. He let himself be fooled with false promises of a Spanish marriage for Baby Charles and Gondomar wrote to Madrid that it would now be safe for Spain to seize the Palatinate.
Now was the time if ever there was one for me to travel to Germany and play the Orphic hymn for at least two of the surviving young princes. In July, Sir Horace Vere crossed to Europe with two thousand men to oppose five times that number and I played truant to travel with this private army. The ruby ring that Michael Hickes had returned to me went for good this time to finance my journey to Wolfenbuttel, where I sang the Orphic hymn for the young Duke. He begged me to return, first helping me on my way to Brandenburg, where I sang for the new Elector, George William. So far, he intends to remain neutral in the war and thus save his people much harm.
All that summer, I supposed you happy and successful in Prague, though the thought still nagged at the back of my mind that I had seen Elizabeth of Bohemia robbed of her crown. Returning to the court of Frederick Ulric at Wolfenbuttel, I met with a daunting request.
"My father told me that you have the reputation of being a seer," said my young host. "He said there was a magus called Johann Dee, I believe, for whom you read the future. In these troubled times, I long to know what is in store for my family."
I had no diamond on which to gaze. This time, it would have to be my old Orpheus music, Paradise, then, perhaps, dark horror and a scene of death. I quailed at the thought. I explained to the Duke that I never knew whether my vision would be of the past, present or future and that, after a long lapse of time, it was possible that my powers had left me. He begged me to make the attempt.
Preceding me to a quiet chamber, he settled himself at some distance from me, yet within view. I took my lute and, closing my eyes, began to play the fantasia of Don Luys Milan. The rainbow colours came and I was transported into another world of greater beauty than ever before. I heard a voice, at first far away, then coming close.
"Tell the Duke that a descendant of his will share the throne of England......" The voice faded. It had been Barbara's. I came to myself in a haze of happiness.
"I have heard your message," said the Duke, "though I can hardly believe it and, strangest of all, it was a woman's voice that came from your lips."
Now my bliss turned to alarm. What was amiss that, as never before, Barbara's voice should issue from my lips? Whence did it come? I knew the answer almost before the thought was formed. Through my Orpheus music, as always, I had been transported to Paradise and Barbara had gone before me to that realm. I should have been happy for her for I knew only too well of her troubled life in this world of sorrow but, I must confess, all I felt at first was the shock of bereavement. The union of our minds had been a solace to us both. Was that now to end and myself left inconsolable? If so, I longed to join her.
I knew from my musical magic that the dead never spoke with me - only in the single case of that brief answer from Ficino, obtained with the help of Doctor Dee. I was certain also, not believing in the simple concepts of Heaven and Hell, that if I lingered long in this world before shedding my fleshly garment, she might be promoted to higher realms out of my reach. We had spoken of rebirth to this earthly life but had always supposed that we should meet again and, this time, live united in happiness. Yet, if we did not cross to the other world together, might not a lapse of time keep us apart for ever?
Such disordered thoughts led me to wish to plunge a knife into my breast, yet self murder might separate me from my love more than if I continued my life alone. I remembered you, Rob, and the grandchildren and knew that I must stand fast.
Nevertheless, I made a fruitless attempt to communicate with Barbara through her miniature, unwilling still to accept that the consolation of trouble sharing was over. I spent the hours of waiting reading and rereading her precious letter, though I had it by heart. The sight of her handwriting brought back her much loved voice and Cecil's hateful tones were expunged from my mind for ever.
Two days later, my eyes hollow with my vigil, I stood in the great hall of the University at Helmstedt and received my Doctorate of Music, in the place where Giordano Bruno, in the old Duke's time, gave an anti-papal oration. The honour was kindly meant but I was, at that moment, past wishing for the tributes of this world.
~
It was not possible to leave Germany that November without a visit to Cassel, where the Landgrave greeted me with open arms, though his face was autumnal.
"The news is bad. Frederick has been defeated in battle at the White Mountain and he and his family are in flight. He has been put to the ban of the Empire and no court will dare to shelter him for long. It seems he placed his entire trust in your son's Orphic hymn and even left the battle field that night to be with his wife."
I knew not where you might now be, Rob, whether with King Frederick's court in rout or whether escaped from Prague by your own means. The Landgrave promised to make every effort to discover your whereabouts, though all was confusion and it would be far from easy.
"Let me look at you closely, John," said my friend, "Your hair is now white and I can see deep lines of pain on your face that were never there before. I must introduce you to my Court Physician, a truly great man, in fact, a second Doctor John Dee."
I submitted to an examination by Michael Maier, who was the first to tell me that the sharp pains in my groin and thigh, sometimes in my male member, were caused by the stone that they thought would have carried off Jamie in 1618.
"The travelling on horseback has aggravated your condition," he advised. "I will give you a draught to kill the worst of the pain. You must avoid alcohol and drink plenty of an infusion of wild campion which I have here. You would do better in your own home, living quietly, and I recommend you to return to England while it is still possible."
I had seen the effects of civil war in my young days in France and knew that his advice was sound but that did not prevent my fears for you, Rob, giving me pause. However, in spite of anxiety and some pain, happy days followed.
"I was in Prague in 1588," Maier reminisced, "hoping for a post at the Emperor Rudolph's court, where Doctor Dee's name was on every lip. He and Edward Kelly had discovered the secret of making gold, or so it was said. It was at that time I first read his 'Monas Hieroglyphica'. Did you know that it was first presented to the Emperor Maximilian by the then Spanish Ambassador, who claimed descent from the Herr Doktor's mentor, the illustrious Raymond Lull? How sad he would be now to see all his dreams (and ours) of religious unity brought to this present pass."
"I saw him myself," recalled the Landgrave, "in the following year, as a boy of nine, when, passing through Hessen, he presented my father with some fine Hungarian horses. He had been recalled to England, I believe, to make gold for your Queen Elizabeth."
"All these great rulers are the same, yourself excepted, Landgrave," I exclaimed. "They are greedy for the precious metal, never realising that what Doctor Dee sought was spiritual gold. I met him on his return from Europe and he was a disappointed man, for Kelly had betrayed him. The Doctor thought the Emperor above worldly greed and had pinned his hopes on him as the leader who would unite the old and the new religions and bring us peace."
"As did we all," agreed the Landgrave, "until his family declared him mad and replaced him by Matthias, the compromiser. After that, we were so sure that King James would give full support to his daughter and son-in-law, that we placed all our hopes on Frederick, though he took Christian of Anhalt's advice, rather than ours, when he accepted the throne of Bohemia. It is tragic, when we have always worked for peace to be on the brink of a disastrous war."
"It may not come to full scale conflict," added Maier, "I was in England after Prince Henry's death and your King impressed me as a peacemaker."
"I am sorry to disillusion you," I interposed, "but he is not so much anxious for a just peace in Europe as for peace and quiet for himself so that he can follow his favourite pursuits of talking, drinking, hunting and dallying with Buckingham. That same George Villiers holds all the power now and he is for war in Europe as are many of the nobles and Parliament, too."
"It was as well then that we did not entrust to your king the secret of the Rose-cross as we did to his son, Henry," said Maurice of Hessen. "What we did after the Prince's death was to send Michael to your Court with a message of Christmas greeting to King James set out in the form of a huge rose, its petals outlined and filled in with Latin compliments. The card was so large, we hoped he might display it in a place where it would meet his eye often. We knew he liked ingenious puzzles and in Latin, above all. We hoped to be able to send him messages through the rose and, if he replied, all would be well; after all, he had joined our evangelical union. However, we were cautious, for Prince Henry had warned us how fickle his father could be and Queen Anne had confided the same to her brother, King Christian."
"And he failed to reply," I surmised. "He would have read the Latin in no time at all and tossed your rose aside. Even if he had heard your messages, he would have put it down to drunken dreaming. Worse still, he might have thought it witchcraft, an abomination to him."
"He was gracious to me," insisted Michael Maier, "and invited me to court to see a play called, if I remember aright 'The Tempest'."
"I wrote and played the music on that occasion," I recalled, "but you would not have noticed me among the consort of musicians."
"Oh, my dear John," exclaimed the Landgrave. "Has it come to that now?" And he quoted from a kind letter he had once sent me about 'some particular illhap that many times follows men of virtue.' I shook my head and went on to describe to him the subject of the play.
"The Magus who drowned his book was Doctor Dee, though James took it upon himself. My dear old friend's last book was offered to a black magician in return for a volume of Raymond Lull which he denied him. All Doctor Dee's great Library was sold to pay for food and fuel until there was nothing left. James threatened him as a wizard, for which the penalty is death, and would not let him clear his name. A king who could take away the livelihood of a good man and who could escape his son's deathbed to go hunting is no fit ally for your cause."
~
That night, Barbara came to me in a dream, beautiful as when we first loved. She told me to go home and that she would watch over you. The Landgrave confirmed this decision.
"You will do little good searching for your son all over Germany like a needle in a haystack. As soon as I learn of his whereabouts, we will communicate, and for old times sake and in memory of our magus, we will use the Monas symbol. Give me the pleasure to accept one of my carriages to take you to the coast and there board ship for England." He insisted on supplying me with journey money and I was equally determined that he accept my lute signed by Laux Maler, saying that his touch would bring forth more beautiful music than mine, whose skill was much diminished.
"I can refute that statement by quoting du Bartas," he smiled.
..An old, rude, rotten, tuneless kit,
If famous Dowland deign to finger it
Makes sweeter music than the choicest Lute
In the gross handling of a clownish Brute.
"I will accept this sacrifice, until I meet your son, and, if he can play on your lute only half as well as his father, I shall return to him his inheritance."
I was packed into the carriage, an extra bundle of new books from Michael Maier - the 'Fama', the 'Confessio', 'The Chemical Wedding' and copies of all his own works, together with a supply of medicines for my malady, more than filling the place of my second lute.
Added to these generous gifts, those two friends had returned to me my self esteem, so badly shaken by the neglect at Jamie's court. What matter that I had lost my powers of composition. I could read, I could learn, I had friends with whom I could exchange ideas as in the old days. The poisonous atmosphere of Whitehall might be ignored since I now felt myself again.
As I travelled north, through countryside the war had not yet reached, I asked for you at every staging post but there was no news, either there, or later from the Landgrave. As the months went by, it seemed that you had vanished from the face of the earth.
~
Back in London, I found that Mall had held the fort and, from behind closed doors, had put out the message that I had some illness of unknown origin. None but Thomas Campion would have dared to visit me and I found that he had died during my absence in Germany. When I returned to court, I was shunned more than ever but my place as lutenist to the king had to be held for me until my death for which I was not yet ready.
I went to Sussex to visit the grandchildren and found John a young man already, in charge of the village school, where his brother and sister had spent happy years. Young Arthur thought of nothing but the sea and hoped to be taken on as cabin boy on the next voyage of the Virginia Company. Susanna, so like her mother and grandmother, had also inherited their skills as a needlewoman and had for some time lived comfortably at Lindfield as companion to Mistress Margaret Board. I gave them both lute lessons and stayed on to teach other young ladies of the neighbourhood, keeping my patience remarkably well for none of them had real talent.
The days at Lindfield proved happy and carefree in a way that was, at first, quite foreign to me. I was bewildered by the kindness of my young ladies, their swift, birdlike movements and their soft chatter. Life was a pleasant game for them, and the blissful days when Barbara, Suzanne and Annie played together in the courtyard and sang to the accompaniment of my lute returned to me, not in bitterness, but in joy as I watched their movements. Over the next few years, I returned to Lindfield as often as I could borrow a carriage, where, well cushioned, I bore the rattling over the rutted roads, feeling the discomfort well worth the peace that awaited me.
In that quietude a miracle was granted to me. Mistress Margaret was setting down some exercise in her music book as I watched closely. She made an error and I, forgetting my disability (which I had not tested for years past) snatched the pen from her and made a necessary correction. She thought nothing of it, for it was by now a habit to conceal my affliction. Yet for me, it was a wonder indeed. I practised my new found skill in secret and, little by little, composition returned, feebly it is true, but the time came when I invented some lines for my young Mistress's music book. It was as if a withered limb gradually came to life. My great ambitions were long gone - it was enough no longer to feel a cripple.
But I must return to that first winter back in England, made bleaker by the news of the death of the Dowager Countess of Pembroke. She was only a year older than myself and, when the pains came, I felt a hundred. Lady Mary proved a generous friend to the end. I came home one day after playing at court to find a package in Mall's hands.
"A fine gentleman in livery delivered this but he had no time to wait for you. He said somewhat I did not quite catch - about a bequest, I think." With age, Mall has become rather deaf, which does not make life easier for a man of little patience.
Unwrapping the package, I found to my amazement and delight the fellow to my lost Orpheus book, which I had thought never to see again! This work with the arms of Portugal on its cover I had thought a family heirloom and that Lady Mary should remember me in her will after these many years brought tears to my eyes. I had read much of Orpheus and, in Italy, seen him depicted by the greatest artists but none moved me so much as my lost picture. With trembling fingers, I turned the pages reverently until I came to the simple line drawing.
How strange - I no longer saw Orpheus as a dancing figure but seated on a rock as he played. Alas for my lost youth, now I saw him with the eyes of an old man! He had the same smile, compact of all knowledge, sorrow as well as joy, that I had seen on lips painted by Leonardo, which they said was the self-portrait of the artist himself. As a child, I had seen on the face of Orpheus a smile of pure happiness because the boat was coming to fetch him to regain Eurydice. Now I knew he had been to the Underworld and lost his love and the boat was returning to the realms of Pluto and Persephone. Yet he could still retain a wry smile, still play for the trees, rocks and beasts and I, too, must play to the end for the stony minds of the brutish pleasure seekers at the court of King James.
